Orson Scott Card wrote Ender's Game, and it was very good. Supposedly it is being made into a movie, though I don't know if they even have a script finalized yet.
The Dune series sucked donkey balls because the underlying message was conflicted. Expansion and growth are good, and if humanity starts to stop and stagnate, then a wise leader may need to act like a brutal tyrant in order to knock humanity out of its slumber, so that humanity will rise up with the energy to free itself from tyranny and, in the process, rekindle the energy to expand and advance. I mean, lookng at this idea in the abstract, or seeing it played out in a fiction created specifically to promote this idea, it may not seem so stupid. But think about applying it in the real world.
Advisor: Great Ruler, our studies show the rate of expansion has steadily decreased for the last 300 years. The rate of technological advancement also seems to have plateaud. Apparently, humans have found the level of advancement at which they are comfortable.
Leader: Comfortable? I say people have gotten lazy and complacent. Comfort is a dead end. It leads to stagnation and eventually rot and death. No, to save the human race, I only see one path. Chain them up, and make slaves of them and mistreat them until they revolt. I never heard of a revolting slave being called lazy and complacent!
Advisor: Umm... Well.... I mean, that sounds like a fine plan, sir, but ... are you sure we couldn't just send everyone to a motivational seminar? I think I have some old Tony Robbins tapes lying around.... Or maybe we could just try to be honest with people? Send out a notice explaining to everyone how survival of our species depends on constant expansion, and to not expand is to stagnate and die, and try to instill the urge to expand and advance in people through positive reinforcement and reasoned debate?
Leader: Fuck that. Chain 'em up, I say! Now excuse me while I go bemoan the cursed fates that forced such a good and kind person as me to suffer the guilt of ruining countless lives in the present for some abstract, future good of humanity. Oh, I don't know how I can bear to be this unjust, alas it is my burden!
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I mean, at some point in the Dune series, I just wanted to throw the book down and scream, "Fuck with playing the cursed martyr forced to be a hated tyrant for some abstract greater good only you can see! If you are so goddam smart, you'd see there are ALWAYS other ways to solve your problems. Who are you, anyway, to decide that so many innocent people should suffer and die and live horrid, oppressed lives just so you can have your little "human expansion" a few centries later? How dare you presume to know that is best for humanity, so that you will not even engage in honest discussion and debate with the very people whose suffering will buy your future?
I mean, it was fine prose, and Frank Herbert has skill in the art of storytelling for pleasure (i.e., giving the reader "payoffs" in the form of creating a fierce conflict and then giving a satisfying resolution). But at a certain point, I get so I cannot stand to read something if the primary underlying moral message is flawed. As I perceived it to be in Dune.
~psychoblast~